Paul Durrant writes: > While I was at Sun I wondered whether there should be a consolidation > for open source drivers (a good while before Solaris itself was open > source). The consolidation would have very lightweight integration > rules (since the driver source would already be freely available). It > would just serve as a means for Sun to collectively build and ship > binaries for most freely available Solaris drivers (to improve the > out-of-the-box Solaris experience).
We already have such a consolidation (SFW), and I think it'd be great to have such drivers delivered there. Note that this does *NOT* fix the dependency problem with Nemo. Those interfaces need to be made public and stable so that we don't have to deal with the cross-consolidation dependencies. > Now I wonder whether something similar is needed to ease open sourcing > of new drivers. There's nothing, of course, to stop anyone writing an > open source Solaris driver an posting the source on their own webspace > under whatever license they desire, but it would be much more > convenient for the community as a whole if Opensolaris.org provided a > repository (which I guess would probably best be modelled as a new > consolidation) for driver source which did not require the overhead > that ON imposes i.e. PSARC, ON C-team, PIT etc. The alternative to a > new consolidation would be if ON was willing to lighten up some of its > integration procedures and Sun get more selective about what it > actually builds into its own distro. The current ON processes are just > wrong for open source. Really? Which processes are wrong? Should some code not have design reviews and code reviews because the author makes it "open?" I think that's pretty far afield of the real problems here. Integrating into ON is forced only if you must use Nemo right _now_. If you use the public GLDv2 or STREAMS interfaces, you're on safe ground delivering in some other consolidation. If you wait until Nemo becomes public (or, better yet, agitate or otherwise help to make sure it happens), then you're also on safe ground. Since ON isn't just a collection of random source that's developed and tested elsewhere, it does indeed impose quality rules and testing requirements. I agree that those may be tough to follow if you are delivering somewhere else as well, but somebody has to impose order, and you certainly do have multiple options available. -- James Carlson, Solaris Networking <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list [email protected]
